Saturday, 8 October 2016

As said in the Denise Levertov essay on this site, really
the Opening to this collection of records and responses to the death of Max
Richards (1937-2016),I have been
spending time thinking about Max’s long interest in religion, of faith lost or
found. He taught on this subject as an English Professor at La Trobe
University, but it's challenges were always personal and he had both a serious
and a bemused consideration of what it might all mean. As for example in this
brief exchange of emails, prompted by his awareness of my keen interest in the
writings of Lesley Chamberlain, especially her work on Russian spirituality and
philosophy. The Les in “the big les discussion” is not a reference to
Chamberlain but Les Murray. That month I conducted a reading group at the
Carmelite Library on spirituality in his poetry.

Remember Van Gogh’s 1885
painting Still-life with Bible? Here it is, number 117 in De la Faille’s catalogue.
You can see the original in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The Bible though it glows with
authority is illegible. You can just see in this reproduction the while smudges
that the artist used to create that effect. Meanwhile the novel, by Emile Zola,
and clearly labelled La Joie de Vivre, waits to be read as the new gospel. The
painting reflected Vincent’s tense relationship with his father, Pastor
Johannes van Gogh. VvG had tried and failed to make the Christian mission his
way of life, although not, according to his sister, without becoming ‘groggy on
piety’. A turning-point was his rejection by the Church in Amsterdam on the
grounds that his Latin was too poor. What do I need Latin and Greek for in
order to help people? was the painter’s adequate reply.

On 15/04/2013, at 1:53 PM, Philip Harvey replied:

Thanks Max. I had no idea Lesley
Chamberlain had a blog.The paragraphs here do not surprise me coming from LC,
who has an arm's length attitude to religion. I don't share her view of the
painting or of Van Gogh. Tolstoy was one of his heroes, and I mean late Tolstoy,
the full-on abandon everything Tolstoy. His art moved way beyond the confines
of Dutch life, but not Christianity. Interesting that she is taking up Zola, I
wonder where it will go? Philip

And on 18/04/2013 Max writes:

Dear Philip,

I almost made it to the big
les discussion, but our man at westpac foiled me by a date with him
unavoidable.